Janitor On Duty

June 11th, 2009

3:47 PM

Rebellion at Lulu

Interesting read if you have some time to waste, or if you have a project at Lulu but hadn't been keeping up with them. More and more, it seems like Createspace is offering authors better profit margins at a more saleable price (read: books aren't marked up to crazy levels) and the only advantage Lulu has as of now is that it is 100% free (Createspace charges $5 for yearly listing). And even then, the "free" thing doesn't sound attractive to me as a reader - this means anyone can dump any brain fart they want into Lulu and announce that they are now published authors. See this thread for a hilarious example of someone who had no business in Lulu:

4 comment(s).

Createspace does not charge a yearly listing fee. I run my imprint through them and have never been charged $5.00 or any sort of listing fee. The proplan is $39.00 per year but that is optional. Here is a link to their book faq: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content4.

Now Amazon Marketplace charges per listing, but Marketplace and Createspace are not the same thing. Lulu is attempting to use the marketplace to list with Amazon those books that do not have distribution beyond Lulu, and to get around the Amazon print shop issue. Not a well thought out plan obviously. Em and I have talked extensively about Lulu with regard to their business model and the poor execution of new business plans. Mick Rooney and LLBR have also been taking the long hard look at Lulu. It ain't pretty.

I can see good reason for the dissent at Lulu. I can't count the reasons that prompted me to leave, but the Lulu forums are no place to get accurate information about anything. And this is and has always been part of the problem.

CreateSpace's free distribution only includes listing on Amazon whereas Lulu's paid package lists in dozens of cyber-bookstores. BUT...I earn $2.35 royalties on my $10.99 CreateSpace title whereas I only earn $.31 on my $10.99 Lulu title. At $.31 per sale, it takes A LOT of sales to earn the $20.00 minimum that it takes to get a check from Lulu.
I recommend to anyone who's thinking about self-publishing, for whatever reason, to go for the plan that calls for the least upfront expenditure even it means listing in fewer venues. There's too much hard work in self-publishing to not end up earning a decent royalty.

"You can pick up a War Journal for about £75 but hardly anybody will want to write one readily, the one I have written is centred around society so no body has to fire a bullet at me except I am dead already.

Put it this way: are you going to buy the Journal of a Man who has a Job of an Author to do and is being chased around by political authorities because he puts himself on the line to prevent political authorities from having as much corruption as they will desire and holds out on them to make the books he writes possible for anything less than £45?"

And this person talks/writes like that through the whole forum conversation!